De Sade and the enlightenment

I've been reading the Wicked Marquis. And I'm intrigued.

In The Marquise de Theleme he spends the firstparagraph building up a picture of happiness - an enlightened marriage of confidence between two equals, tender sentiments, rationality, equableness. It's a delightful vision. Then, in a couple of sentences, he destroys it - kills the husband, reduces the wife to penury, and starts a train of debaucheries and cruelties.

I'm intrigued by the way he sets up and casts down this image of happiness. Partly, I think, he does so out of a distaste for conventional pieties. A distaste for the kind of reasonableness and 'getting along nicely' that suffices instead of passion. I can share that - I always find the world of Jane Austen tempts me to rip the curtains, to throw ink at the wallpaper, to shout 'fuck!' - anything to bring a bit of real passion to her closeted texts. (Yes, I can read Austen, and I love her style - but God, I would hate to live in her world.) De Sade sees the reasonable and 'good enough' as inauthentic - in which he's an early Existentialist, demanding we live authentic lives, as Sartre does.

And de Sade can use the language of the Enlightenment just as well as any 'enlightened' writer.

But I think that there's a second urge, too. He really does want to destroy. It's not just an urge to cruelty, but also the sheer delight of the child who has built a sandcastle only to smash it, watch it crumble as the tide comes in, jump on the remains till there's only a hump of sand to show where the castle stood. It's a primal urge.

And like any rebellious child, he wants dirt. This isn't erotica - it's not written to delight; he wants dirt, excreta, flabby old bodies, the disgusting rather than arousing. Nobody loves him, everybody hates him, he's going in the garden to eat worms, and dirt, and shit, and look, nobody loves him. But few children devote themselves to writing about it, to smashing their childhood Edens in that way. The marquis de Sade's erotic is an erotic of rebellion.

There's something else that intrigues me. It's the utterly cool, scientific way that de Sade is proceeding here. Later on, in 120 days of Sodom, he actually tries to reduce sexual activity to painting-by-numbers; 120 days, 120 different tortures. (It makes it tedious reading.)

Now this isn't unprecedented in French literature -- particularly when the subject of the experiment is female. (That's an intriguing insight on its own, of course.) Rousseau for instance sees a young woman as something to be experimented with, taught, moulded. In a horrible way, de Sade is actually proceeding in a typically Enlightened way - despite the fact that he's trying to destroy the Enlightenment.

I find de Sade quite intriguing. Some works are more readable than others; at the end, I suspect, he was as mad as the other inhabitants of the Charenton lunatic asylum. But he has his points - and though I may not be following his example in my writing, he's certainly made me think.

Research & development

I thought it was possibly time to reinvest some of the royalties from my first erotic novel into 'R&D'. Or perhaps 'R&R' would be more accurate.

I've just bought one of Lelo's vibrators - the Liv. I did quite a lot of research before I decided to put my money down; to my surprise and delight there are quite a lot of good sex toy review blogs out there.

Now there are two kinds of vibes I really detest. First, the 'fluo Willy' - plastic penis-shaped vibes in glowing radioactive colours. Plastic is not something I particularly like next to the skin anyway. And secondly, the 'implement' - vibrators that are hard, straight, completely unergonomic, and look like pens, or bullets, or (ugh) forceps.

That's about 90% of what's on the market.

Then there are the glass dildos, the wooden dildos, the stainless steel vibes, all very expensive.

And finally, I found Lelo's product range. Silicone, smart, slightly abstract, and above all, CURVACEOUS vibes and dildos. Thre are various options; the Gigi, for instance, is specially made for G-spot action, while there's the Ella double-ended dildo, at the budget end. I finally opted for the Liv, a slim, curvy vibrator that comes in rather macho naval blue, and a much more girly cerise. Guess which I bought?

I am surprised just how exciting the act of shopping can be - researching a vibrator on the internet. Some of the web sites are terrible; others, like Coco de Mer and Exclusively Eve, are works of art in themselves. I also enjoyed Coffee, Cake and Kink - though I was sad to find that the kinky cafe had closed, so I won't be able to pop in. (Believe it or not I used to work only two doors away! but, alas, a long time before the caff opened.)

Perhaps I'll have to put a research chapter in one of my erotic novels. Currently, however, Hal is tickling Horace awake on their first morning in Venice, so I had better get back to my boys!

Rewriting...

I've realised one of the things that gets me going is finding a historical story and wishing it had turned out differently.

That's one reason my Wife of Bath found her sixth husband. I just loved her and wanted her to go on and find the right man after five who so obviously weren't.

Now, I'm working on an interesting menage. I know quite a lot about Horace Walpole; I used to eat many of my meals in front of a picture of him, aged about eighteen, a dewy-eyed, fresh-faced, intelligent looking boy in a light blue velvet coat. (If memory is accurate, which sometimes it isn't, quite.) I've read many of his letters - vivacious, gossipy, well observed (he was probably the first real art historian in England, and one of the prime movers behind the rise of the Gothick).

Now, Horace went off on the Grand Tour, with his friend Thomas Gray. (Yes, that Gray - Elegy in a Country Churchyard.) Both of them are historical figures who might have been gay; then again, they may just not have been keen on the expense and hassle of eighteenth-century marriage (and Gray, as an academic, would have quite likely have been unable to marry anyway). Something happened in Florence. Maybe they found the social distance between them had become unbridgeable - Walpole was the Prime Minister's son, Gray came from much more humble roots. Maybe Walpole was partying too much and Gray couldn't find enough antiquities and romantic ruins. Or maybe - and I do actually think this may well have been the case - maybe the two lovers had a falling out...

Nothing can be proved. So much for history. But imagine, if you will, two boys of nineteen or so, off on the Grand Tour. Innocents abroad. Like so many English boys of the time, they run a little wild - they visit courtesans in Venice, as well as looking at the Titians and Tintorettos; they visit the Forum in Rome, but they also marvel at the flashers of the Via Appia (I'm sure that tradition must go back a couple of centuries at least!) and find some interesting 'private salons'... And then in Florence, things come to a head when Horace finds a girl ... and Gray realises he's jealous.

Now I know I've transgressed the boundaries of history here. I'm going to have to rename one of my characters, and I'm going to have to give them slightly different backgrounds. But I'm going to make Horace and Gray have a happy ending; because I always wanted them to live happily ever after.

Now, what was the other interesting little snippet of history I've read in the last week or so? Oh yes - Peter the Great and Menshikov. Peter appears to have been - to pinch a word from Russell T Davies - 'omnisexual'; he certainly had some interesting enthusiasms and friendships, falling in love with a Lithuanian peasant and later making her his empress. Several biographers note, of rumours that Peter had an affair with Menshikov, that though Peter wasn't obviously gay, he wasn't one to deny himself any experience that might be interesting or pleasurable. And Menshikov was regularly allowed to get away with murder - well, with fairly extensive corruption and some innovative approaches to taxation - that other crown servants weren't. So I wonder... perhaps there's the germ of a plot there, too?

New review!

I've just received notice of a review of 'The Diligence de Lyon' on Joyfully Reviewed - and I'm thrilled. The reviewer really likes my lead character - which somehow makes the hard graft of writing worthwhile.

Currently, I'm working on a historical novel which has just got to the 50,000 word stage and needs another 100k - so no erotica for the time being. But I have promised myself to do a little more work on the painting idea that I mentioned - and I'm learning how to grind pigments, a bit of 'practical work', and not the kind that most people would think is relevant to the work of an erotic romance writer!

Body painting

I'm currently working on ideas about 17th century women painters - Artemisia Gentileschi, Sophonisba Anguissola, Judith Leyster. Painting wasn't supposed to be women's work - though many women probably knew how to grind pigments and mix paints for the man of the house - but these women took the brush up themselves, and created some very interesting paintings.

Their paintings are particularly interesting because they sometimes subvert what we're expecting to see. Anguissola paints herself - an act of triumphant self-assertion for a woman - and almost literally paints her teacher out of the picture. Gentileschi paints scenes of rape and violence that may derive from her own experiences - Susanna and the Elders, Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. Judith Leyster shows women quiet in their own space at home, rather than in the tavern scenes that were so popular at the time.

But what interests me particularly about painting is its erotic potential. First of all, painting a portrait is immensely erotic in potential - to get to know someone so intimately, to look at them that hard, is an incredibly intimate experience.

Then of course you have the idea of actually painting someone else's body. Several interesting things here; the soft, wet smoothness of the paint and the tickle of the brush - directly physical feelings. The ability to change the look of the body - to wear a tiger face or a skull face, to change the colour of the skin, to accentuate and emphasise certain aspects, or to create a design that masks the body completely...

I'm remembering some of the 'happenings' of the 1960s in which artists took their naked bodies and used them to smear paint on their canvas... these weren't, as far as I know, erotic performances, but the idea is intensely sensual. And there's also something about imprinting your body on to reality - a way of preserving a moment, but also of honouring the body, something Western culture is not usually much good at.

So I think you can take it as read that when I get round to actually writing the novella, the paint will get all over the place - not just on the canvas!

Good news!

I've just heard from Logical Lust - an acceptance! They're going to be e-publishing my Pilgrim for Love in 2010. Which leaves my second erotic novella still in the submission process, after one rejection... and means I've got a contract to look through (ugh, hate the legal work) and a marketing plan to write.

Pilgrim for Love is a medieval story about youth and age, innocence and experience - and the way we so often get everything completely wrong about each other.

And it took relatively little research, as the setting is one that I know - the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela - and the few questions I had, re-enactor friends were able to answer.

I was very tempted to put in one deliberate mistake though! Just to see if my readers are attentive...

Sensory experience and the act of yielding

One of the best pieces I can remember that relies on pure sensory experience is the opening of a story by Ursula Le Guin (The Masters) which describes some weird masonic style ritual.

The difficulty of standing completely still. Flame burning the man's cheek as he falls, a fiery torch in his hand.

It's a masterpiece. Nowhere more than in the utter uncertainty, the sheer peril of the moment as the blindfolded man stands, and wonders what is happening.

Now in fact, I don't think it's that far from a good BDSM story. It's all about that moment where you know that you have given up control; that what happens next is not up to you, but it will transform you in some way. It's what is not described that matters - the context, the ritual, the controlling will; all we can see is the darkness inside the blindfold, all we can sense is the emptiness outside, the yawning gulf that may or may not be there. And then we have to trust utterly, and take that step forward.

Good BDSM writing takes that moment of trust, that moment of fear, and yokes the two tightly together.

And I suspect that even if this isn't your particular kink (it isn't really mine; black leather is for the motorbike, not the boudoir, in my book), there's a little bit about that moment of trust in all good sex - trusting a lover to do something you haven't done quite that way before, to hold you just a bit too hard, to pull your hair or hold your hands down just once... or simply that moment before you fall into bed for the first time....